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All Tahar Ben Jelloun Quotes
I came to poetry through the urgent need to denounce injustice, exploitation, humiliation. I know that's not enough to change the world. But to remain silent would have been a kind of intolerable complicity.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
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I belong to a specific category of writers, those who speak and write in a language different from that of their parents.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
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What have we achieved since the end of the Second World War? We have allowed petty, bourgeois regimes in which everything is average, mediocre.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
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Poetry is not only a set of words which are chosen to relate to each other; it is something which goes much further than that to provide a glimpse of our vision of the world.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
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My hope is that countries like Morocco will have investment to create work, so people don't have to leave.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
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In the '70s I was in exile; every time I went back I wondered if they'd take my passport away.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
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This universe can very well be expressed in words and syllables which are not those of one's mother tongue.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
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To lead a country, you must periodically hold a national consultation in which people representing different programmes can make a bid for power.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
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We do not have many intellectuals who can speak out for us internationally. We have no writers who are recognized, respected and loved outside the Arab world.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
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We must stop posing as victims of the West and behaving negatively towards the West. We must participate with the West on an equal footing in the reconstruction of the world.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
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Poetry is a form of mathematics, a highly rigorous relationship with words.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
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In the Arab world, there is no link between the cultural habits of peoples and the ways of thinking and creating of modern intellectuals. They are two separate worlds.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
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I write about wounds, the eternal treasons of life. It's not very funny, but it's sincere. My commitment is to sincerity.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
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